DESCRIPTION (Taken from the applicant's abstract): The goal of the efforts proposed in this grant application is to conduct a consensus meeting of an international group of clinician-scientists and clinical trials methodologists to produce standardized response criteria for systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) trials in the "units" of existing disease activity measures and by selected major organ systems. The field of experimental therapeutics in SLE is on a steep slope of discovery and their evaluation in human subjects will be enhanced if standard end points are used. Standard response criteria will allow meaningful comparisons between trials, promote the use of innovative study designs, and greatly improve the efficiency and shorten the time-line for testing new interventions. This grant will support a meeting of stakeholders to develop consensus response criteria based on data from an international pre-meeting exercise in which over 1000 patient histories were evaluated. Consensus building techniques, such as Delphi and nominal group techniques will be used.